Free Energy: Love Sign (review)

Free Energy: Love Sign (Free People, 2013)

If there was a band that was destined for a hipster backlash, Free Energy would be that band.  Their 2010 debut Stuck on Nothing was pretty widely critically acclaimed and had the kind of back story that sent the hipster music press all a-Twitter: former members of Minnesota indie band Hockey Night uproot to Philly, go all classic-rock, hook up with James Murphy, and release a Murphy-produced record on DFA.  You could have fed this story to certain parts of the blogosphere with a spoon.  Fast forward three years: the band is no longer on DFA (self-releasing the album on their own nascent label, Free People) and Murphy isn’t along for the ride.  And, needless to say, there’s been some backlash.  In a particularly brutal review, Pitchfork critic Ian Cohen notes the songs are “big, dumb, and nothing else” while giving the record a low mark of 3.6.  (The debut scored much higher, an 8.1, reviewed by David Bevan)

Here’s the thing: there’s not a marked difference between the style and content of the two records.  Big, dumb hooks abound, and the influence of pop-leaning 70’s and 80’s rock (Cheap Trick, The Cars and Thin Lizzy particularly) looms over the whole shebang.  Cohen wonders whether any band should aspire to be the new Cheap Trick, given the current state of the music industry, which seems insane.  Cheap Trick made some HUGE records and made a shit-ton of money for Epic Records, but apparently that’s not what record labels are after.  Or something. To each their own, of course, and if Cohen finds the hooks to be empty calories, and lusts for something more filling, that’s fair.  But it seems like Free Energy is getting hammered for making a record that sounds a LOT like the lauded debut, and the hipster crowd is realizing that the beloved mastermind of all things cool, James Murphy, didn’t really add much to their party rock.  I say this, by the way, as fan of LCD Soundsystem.  Murphy makes cool music, but I don’t think his influence is even notably present on Stuck on Nothing. 

So, what’s present on Love Sign?  To borrow a joke from SNL: more cowbell!  The first single from the record, “Electric Fever(which snuck out in early 2011, long before the record), is a rock-party raver, with boatloads of cowbell to satiate that fever you have for, well, more cowbell.  There are some slower tracks, as well, but this a record full of big riffs, danceable rock rhythms, and lyrics about dancing, partying, and electric fevers.  Electric fever, by the way, is apparently a positive thing, in the same way as rockin’ pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu.  The production is handled by the band and rock veteran John Agnello, who has produced folks like Kurt Vile, Dinosaur Jr, and Sonic Youth, but made his name in the 80’s with populist rockers The Hooters and the Outfield (he produced the #2 smash “Your Love”) and, most recently with The Hold Steady, another transplanted bunch of Minnesotans with a classic rock jones.  And it's a perfect fit: clear, loud, punchy.  Modern, but retro. 

In the end, this is a fun record.  It’s something to enjoy while you’re at the gym, or hanging with some friends and beers, or cleaning the kitchen, or whatever.  It’s not full of the kind of insights you’d glean from some rock Poet Laureate.  It’s not full of the weight-of-the-world angst you’d get from The National or Arcade Fire.  There’s no song on the record that laments how the younger generation is cooler than you.  It’s not even full of the existential life affirmations that you’d get from its closest musical analogue, last year’s monster Celebration Rock by Japandroids (my fave of 2012).  It’s just a record about rocking, and drinking, and having fun, and while those records aren’t uncommon, when they’re done well, it’s just nice to have them.  It’s nice to know that somebody, somewhere is slamming back a Jack and Coke and air-guitaring, even if the cool kids are sitting in the corner, pouting because Daft Punk isn’t playing at their house.

The Joy Formidable: Wolf's Law (Review)

The Joy Formidable: Wolf’s Law (Canvasback/Atlantic, 2013)

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a whole lot of revivalism goin’ on.  Simon Reynolds doesn’t like it, and claims that everything old is unoriginal again (in Retromania) and while I like some of his work, I’m not buying the worries about retromania.  Music critics tend to work in one of two main directions: either reviewing a record and throwing out musical signposts and legacies that said record recalls (the RIYL [recommended if you like] review), or evaluating a record and lamenting how there’s nothing new under the sun present in the grooves (the Old Hat review).  And I get it.  If you listen to records for a living, I imagine you will eventually become bored and wish for something that will cause you to reconceive your whole musical world.  RIYL reviews have their place, but they can also frustrate: if I had a nickel for every band I checked out because they allegedly ‘sound like XTC and Squeeze’ only to left wanting, I’d be able to fund an actual XTC reunion show.  (Not really).  So, as we sit, in the early parts of the second decade of the ‘oughts, we find that two of the biggest current revivals tie themselves to musical scenes/genres from (roughly) twenty years ago: the 90’s Alternative Revival and the Nu-Gaze Revival.  

The beginnings of the Nu Gaze revival might have been found in the short-lived blog hysteria over chillwave and glo-fi.  While most of the seminal shoegaze bands had broken up or simply vanished, the willingness to use shoegazery sound-washes started to make those bands hip to namecheck for the first time in a long while.  While chillwave quickly grew passé for bloggers, and commercial radio paid no heed to Toro Y Moi or Memory Tapes, more than a few young bands began to incorporate elements of many of the 90’s biggest alternative bands into their sounds, and, of course, many of those 90’s bands had, themselves, liberally borrowed from shoegaze.  By the end of the 2000’s, bands like Yuck, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Silversun Pickups, Metric, and many others were echoing bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, and many more from the alt-rock goldrush.

The Joy Formidable fit into both categories: there’s a clear line of influence from the criminally underappreciated female-fronted shoegaze combo Lush, if only because of the combination of aggressively buzzy guitars and occasionally delicate vocals from frontwoman Ritzy Bryan.  Interestingly, though, the songs that do echo Lush sound less like their early, Cocteau Twins-indebted ethereal incarnation (the first three EPs, compiled as Gala or the first full-length, Spooky) and more like the charged up, Britpoppy latter day record Lovelife.  But there’s also the guitar skronk and emotional gravitas of a jacked up Billy Corgan, and the noisy guitar heroics of a J Mascis or Thurston Moore, not to mention heavier shoegazers like Swervedriver (circa Mezcal Head) and Catherine Wheel.  And Bryan’s vocals (big and powerful, coming from a tiny Welsh pixie) certainly owe something to Shirley Manson, as well as fellow Welsh belter Cerys Matthews (of Catatonia). “Maw Maw Song” features shifting tempos and metallic riffs that echo Black Sabbath.  There’s a ‘wild’ vibe to many of the lyrics, which are replete with mentions of animals, forests, and weather (Wolf’s Law, by the way, is a medical theory about the adaptable strength of bone under pressure).  The recording of the album, by the band (and mixed by master-mixer Andy Wallace), took place in a snowed-in cabin in a remote part of Maine, and this could be the source of the Thoreau-esque naturalism that runs through the lyrics (“through the mists and sun and gales and showers/no season to where my love begins”) and album art (surrealist paintings of animals by Martin Wittfooth).

A whole lot of people were exposed to the Joy Fomidable as a result of their inclusion in one of the Twilight soundtracks.  Those people might be somewhat off put by some of the more aggressive songs on Wolf’s Law, but there’s plenty to appeal to suburban housewives, teen vampire romance fans, and those, like me, who miss the heyday of bands like Lush, Swervedriver, and The Catherine Wheel.  It’s also a record that rewards repeat listens: there are plentiful hooks but there are also lots of little moments that sneak past you, at first, but bubble up once the power of the hooks and melodies recede into the background.